A portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin, painted by former President George W. Bush, is displayed at “The Art of Leadership: A President’s Personal Diplomacy” exhibit at the Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas April 4.

Reuters

No one likes a critic. But when the former leader of the free world progresses from painting his dog to painting world leaders, the deluge of reviews — both of the art and the Bush presidency — was inevitable. Following George W. Bush’s release of more than 24 paintings of world leaders, critics, commentators, and the Internet weighed in his work.

Jasan Farago offered withering distaste for the exhibit in a Guardian piece Friday. He starts off: “Many good artists do bad things. Cellini and Caravaggio were both murderers…So just because a painter has – for example – the blood of up to 136,012 dead Iraqis on his hands does not, in itself, prove that he lacks talent.” He then adds: “Bush’s little paintings will be forgotten.”

An accompanying Guardian piece by Jonathan Jones says that Mr. Bush’s Putin portrait has “a classic amateur clumsiness and oddity to it.” He adds: “This is the art of Forrest Gump.”

The Telegraph’s Alastair Sooke hits some similar notes, saying Mr. Bush “paints in a similar fashion to the way he talks – affecting a folksy, homespun, plain-speaking tone, with just enough ham-fisted strangeness and bungling missteps to keep things interesting.” He singles out the Putin painting, saying there is “something unconventional and compelling” about the image, and that it suggests a “strained, potentially bruising relationship between sitter and artist.”

A positive review from the Washington Post’s Adam Taylor also zeroes in on the Putin painting, noting: “The painting of Putin doesn’t necessarily stand out because of artistic merit (though I’d argue that it is a really good painting aesthetically). What’s really fascinating is to watch Bush grapple with the identity of Putin, a man he once claimed to understand well. ”

Ian Crouch in The New Yorker said of the exhibit, “No one expected this to be ‘Frost/Nixon II.’” He noted that Mr. Bush’s latest hobby has been “the most interesting thing about his post-Presidential public life,” and ridiculed the “Today” segment that unveiled the portraits and interviewed a number of Bushes—“a modern American version of ‘Downton Abby.’”

Peter Baker in The New York Times called Mr. Bush’s choice of subjects “revealing.” He writes, “The official debut of the artist known as W. peels back the curtain on the hobby that has consumed him, and intrigued many others, over the last couple of years. Although some of his early works, including vaguely unsettling self portraits in the bath and shower, were posted on the Internet after his family’s email accounts were hacked, this is the first time the former president has staged an exhibit of his art.”

The paintings that were first revealed last year by a hacker known as Guccifer won some praise, though most fixated on the president’s subject matter: himself, naked and bathing. At the time, Jerry Saltz wrote a glowing review on Vulture, calling a painting of Mr. Bush’s toes in the bathtub “the strangest, and the strongest.”

“Bush regards himself. Yet nothing untoward is showing or seen. He is chaste and untouched even when alone. We see his knobby knees and his toes peeking up above the running water. A Freudian will have to tell us why the water is running in both pictures. Private baptism; trying to get clean; infantile ecstasies; purification rituals?” he wrote.

On Friday, Mr. Saltz told CNN he was no fan of Bush’s presidency but reiterated that he liked Mr. Bush’s art, and said of the Putin painting: “the strangeness of this portrait does border on the freakish.” He offered one tip: Rely less on the photographs, and more on your own experiences and imagination. “Paint the 2000 election. Paint yourself landing on the aircraft carrier. Let us see your world,” he said.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has also lauded Mr. Bush’s work. “I’m a layperson, I’m not an art expert, but I’m pretty impressed by the former president’s work and I think it’s fascinating,” he said at a press briefing in February.

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